LinkedIn has over 750 million users, with the vast majority of them being professionals, go-getters, decision-makers, CEOs, and entrepreneurs. In North America alone, there are more than 4 million high net worth investors (HNWI) active on the platform.
In a nutshell, LinkedIn users are prospects who could potentially benefit from the services of a financial advisor.
We will cover some of the main reasons financial advisors should leverage LinkedIn for marketing purposes and why it has become one of the most well-suited platforms for lead generation.
Why Financial Advisors Should Be on LinkedIn
- Reputation Building
LinkedIn is an ideal place to establish and show off your reputation as a trustworthy and professional individual (something that’s a make-or-break metric in this line of work).
By creating an aesthetically pleasing profile in your brand colors that showcase your skills, experience, and the services you provide, you are making yourself available to a massive base of potential customers.
If you aim to get over 500 connections, you will have a decent-sized audience to share your posts with and an increased amount of shared connections.
You will also appear in the search results more often because LinkedIn’s algorithm favors accounts with 500+ people in their network.
- Social Proof
LinkedIn is a great way to leverage social proof, which is a psychological phenomenon describing the way that people copy the actions of others in a given situation.
Social proof is one of the primary influencers people consider when deciding who to do business with online. They look to the experience of others to get an idea of what kind of service they can expect.
In the context of LinkedIn, you can exploit social proof in several ways.
Because others will see your list of connections and perceive these as validations of your reputation, you will appear trusted and popular within the community.
You can present testimonials on your profile as endorsements of your expertise, which will powerfully affect your audience’s perception of you because they will now have certain expectations based on the positive experiences of others.
If you are constantly being verified as a trusted and respected financial advisor, what will people assume?
Yep…you got it.
- Generate Website Traffic
You should also be on LinkedIn to generate some quality traffic to your website.
Because it is a social network for professionals, content that you post on LinkedIn can be shared far and wide between like-minded people.
A good idea for a financial advisor might be to write a blog post on your website entitled; ‘10 financial mistakes to avoid in 2021’, then link to this post through another post on LinkedIn.
This kind of content will be popular amongst the demographics of LinkedIn; it will also be relevant to your business, promote your services, position you as an authority in the industry, and hopefully send some leads to your website.
You never know; it might even go viral.
- Networking
Being the original purpose of the social platform, LinkedIn does a fantastic job at facilitating networking between professionals, which provides an opportunity for financial advisors because it allows you to expand your reach.
By consistently engaging with your network and offering them value at every opportunity, the number of people in your network will increase, and new clients will constantly be produced.
This ties back into social proof because once you have a growing network of people who view you as credible, word-of-mouth will ensure that more and more people trust your expertise and, therefore, do business with you.
- Create Demand
You can use LinkedIn to create a demand for your services by showcasing what you have achieved for other people. This is an effective method of persuasion because you are showing what value you have provided your other clients and offering new prospects the chance to have that value for themselves.
A final word on social proof – it is a social network, after all! The effects of this phenomenon are magnified when people see that other people similar to them have acted in a certain way or made a particular decision.
So if you have done a great job for a client and showcased this on LinkedIn, accompanied by a positive review from the client, people who also need a financial advisor are going to identify with your satisfied client and be more likely to follow suit and hire you.
People tend to follow the crowd, but when we identify with the crowd – e.g. when we feel like the crowd is made up of people like us – we are far more likely to follow that crowd.
Create demand by showing what you can do for people and have your satisfied clients testify to the value they received.
- Lead Generation
LinkedIn is a great place for lead generation, especially with a service such as yours.
Due to sheer numbers, there are probably more people who need the services of a financial advisor on Facebook and Instagram, but they would be like finding a needle in a haystack.
People who need your services will be less widely distributed on LinkedIn.
If you threw a metaphorical dart at LinkedIn’s user base, you would probably hit someone who could be viewed as a potential prospect for a financial advisor!
LinkedIn partnered with a research firm to produce a study called; ‘Influencing Mass Affluents on Social Media.’
They discovered that close to 90% of people with investable assets between $100,000 and $1M are active social media users.
The clients are certainly out there, and LinkedIn is an ideal place to reel them in.
As well as having all of your potential clients in a more condensed space, you can also be highly targeted with your marketing on LinkedIn through LinkedIn Premium or Sales Navigator.
Purchasing one of these reduces the number of outreach restrictions placed on your account so that you can approach more people, as well as enabling more detailed targeting options.
If your goal is to build up contacts in your local area, you can easily target relevant people this way.
You can search for people by location, job title, seniority level, the size of the company they work for, and more. So once you have identified your ideal customer profile, you can start finding them with ease.
7 Ways to Use LinkedIn for Marketing & Advertising
1. Create an Impressive Profile
Your profile will be like your online CV, and you need to make it eye-catching – foregrounding your achievements and selling yourself.
Here are a few tips for creating a striking profile:
- Select a professional photo for your profile image.
- Create a headline that describes more than just your job title. Explain what value you provide and why you love to help people. Maybe even have a professional copywriter work on your headline.
- Select a suitable banner for your profile, perhaps in your brand colors or with a logo displayed.
- Create an engaging summary. This is an important opportunity to market yourself, and you could also benefit from a copywriter’s expertise here. You could tell your own story, what makes you tick, why you are different, and how you have served people in the past.
- Endorsements. You can request for people to endorse your skills on the recommendations section of your profile, which will increase the likelihood that others will want to do business with you.
2. Nail Your Niche and USP
Most advisors are on LinkedIn these days. But the ones who are successful understand the importance of setting themselves apart from the competition. And there are two distinct ways to do this.
First off, you need to select a niche. If you’re going after everyone, you’re not appealing to anyone. Being a “holistic” advisor doesn’t count. Find a specific niche and serve them. You can niche down by picking a particular market (like navy veterans, single moms, or CEOs), stage of life (millennials or pre-retirees), location (a specific city or neighborhood), or even product line (like infinite banking).
Once you have a niche, you need a unique selling proposition (USP). This is the one thing that sets you apart and clearly explains what value you bring to your target client.
When I think about industry professionals who are clear on who they are and what they bring to the table, a couple of advisors come to mind: Regan Schiller from Edmonton, Alberta and Pak Le from Islandia, New York. Both are recognized as top professionals in the wealth management and financial planning industry.
Regan Schiller is a retirement specialist with expertise in working with business owners/professionals and retirees with a strong focus on helping them transform their financial future and achieve their personal financial goals.
His expertise lies in helping individuals identify their primary risks in retirement and structuring a plan to help them avoid market downturns while protecting their life savings.
How’s that for specific? Rather than just call himself a retirement advisor, he’s carved out an entire niche that’s ultra specific to his strengths and interests.
Pak Le specializes in helping businesswomen by listening, educating, empowering, and helping them find freedom.
As she says, “Life comes at you fast sometimes. Women juggling a career, motherhood, and marriage, taking on a caregiver role for their child, spouse, or parent can be overwhelming. Obtaining an understanding of how this new role may impact them emotionally, financially, and physically should be discussed with their advisor.”
So rather than casting a wide net and trying to be an advisor for everyone, Le has dialed in her target audience and messaging. LinkedIn plays a big role in that.
3. SEO
If you haven’t heard of SEO, it’s a term that describes the way content is optimized to become more visible on search engines.
You can tap into this powerful form of marketing by including keywords on your company profile, such as financial advisor, financial planner, or wealth management/
Then when someone searches these terms on LinkedIn, your profile will hopefully appear somewhere near the top.
4. Persuasive Pitch
Once you make contact with potential clients, you will want to deliver a pitch that hits a home run.
If you aren’t a skilled writer, employing a copywriter is definitely advisable at this stage. Prospects receive countless cold pitches each day on LinkedIn. Thus, you will need a bit of persuasion power to cut through the noise.
An effective sales pitch, however, that employs direct-response copywriting principles is going to be a very wise investment. A properly crafted pitch can be the difference between success and failure on LinkedIn.
5. Engaging Media
Images attract more attention than text, and videos attract significantly more attention than images.
When creating your first posts, be mindful of these facts and use media types that will attract the most attention.
6. Ad Campaign
Launch an ad campaign.
LinkedIn provides some great tools for advertising and marketing, with options such as sponsored content, message ads, text ads, and more.
Through Campaign Manager, you can select your budget, define your goals, and control the whole campaign yourself.
7. Skill Verification
New data published by LinkedIn revealed that 69% of professionals think that verified skills are more important than a college degree.
By proving that you are qualified to do what you claim you can do, you are a lot more likely to be hired to perform that service than if there was no proof.
This is a great way to market yourself as a verified professional who is provenly capable of providing a quality service.
LinkedIn: Where Business is Done
In summary, the reasons financial advisors should be on LinkedIn are too numerous to mention, and the marketing and advertising potential it offers is too good to neglect.
With the ability to build your reputation, grow your network, leverage social proof, boost website traffic, and launch highly targeted marketing initiatives – failing to take full advantage of this platform is a major mistake.
As LinkedIn’s motto goes: “Do business where business is done.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
